


Castlevania: Occident and Racial construction in Netflix

by fichuntie



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series, 悪魔城伝説 | Castlevania lll: Dracula's Curse
Genre: Academic, Discourse, Meta, Other, Race
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 05:55:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17258789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fichuntie/pseuds/fichuntie
Summary: I intend to apply a few concepts to racial construction within the netflix castlevania, focusing mainly on season two.Racial construction will be considered in three ways: 1) the construction of occidental other via medieval history, 2) the modernization of tropes of Roma/Romani peoples via Gothic horror vampire media, and 3) contemporary american understanding of Blackness.





	1. Chapter 1

Well here we are.

I’m writing meta.

I intend to apply a few concepts to racial construction within the netflix castlevania, focusing mainly on season two. 

Racial construction will be considered in three ways: 1) the construction of occidental other via medieval history, 2) the modernization of tropes of Roma/Romani peoples via Gothic horror vampire media, and 3) contemporary american understanding of Blackness.

In particular, I will focus on Isaac: the ways in which he is understood by viewers of the series. This analysis is brought on by a visceral reaction I had while watching the show, one that left me unable to finish the final episodes of season two. The immediate way in which I understood the character was… a lot. 

I write this on ao3 for a few reasons. Chief being the archival and academic potential of ao3, TWC and 2019’s focus on fans of color. Secondary is the participatory potential. I’m open to comment, criticism, and engagement on this work as it is ongoing and even after it is complete. Edits are likely to be ongoing. 

As a participant myself, I will contextualize. I did not play that castlevania games and will not being contextualizing the show with those games. Although I do play other video games including jrpgs so I am familiar with some tropes of the fantasy genre of japanese games of a later era. I am a fan of Ayami Kojima as a illustrator and character designer. Certainly it would be valuable for others to contextualize how a japanese viewer may re-construct these characters as they have been re-interpreted from the original games.  
I am deeply invested in gothic vampires especially modern retellings which destabilize the traditional meanings. (yes, Carmilla of 2014 youtube)

Similarly, i am taking this on in my spare time as a pet project while working full time in an unrelated field. While the tone will likely vacillate between the academic writing and the personalized fandom meta tone, i hope to provide valuable context on this topic in a genre i belove. To quote from Gloria Anzaldua of “speaking in tongues: a letter to 3rd world women writers” in “this bridge called my back”:

“Because the world i create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing i put order in the world, give it a handle so i can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what others erase when i speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you.”


	2. Chapter 2

‘The Idea of Things’ poses a method to reclaim understandings of meaning in Victorian literature. Freedgood proposes that the objects placed in long descriptions held meaning to the Victorian readers, situating characters, settings, and themes with the context of those objects. Objects were in a time before commodity, imbued with a materiality of the conflicts of the time and collected in novel for affinity of meaning. For example, a contemporary reader of Jane Eyre would understand the value of a fabric, the sensation of it, and the import provenance which in turn could speak to class, sexuality, and slavery. 

“Mahogany furniture signifies that Jane is newly rich but not possessed of nouveau riche taste [...] Accordingly, the knowledge that is stockpiled in these things bears on the grisly specifics of conflicts and conquests that a culture can neither regularly acknowledge nore permanently destroy” (Idea of Things) 

We are the contemporary watchers and readers of Castlevania, a Netflix adaptation of a world-wide exported Japanese video game. 

This reading of object is encouraged in Gothic horror. The Bram Stoker Dracula is a piece cobbled together through objects: diary notes and telegrams from a then-new piece of machinery. The reader is expected to understand the horror of these left behind objects, as well as place the characters through them. The magical provenance of objects is also one of materiality: Dracula’s dirt is such an item, affected by the history and location of the material.   
Gothic horror has consistently used one fantastical object to stand in for a real world counterpart as well as to convey material context. 

Castlevania utilizes this: the richly painted scenes and meticulously animated details.

One such example of horror is when Alucard examines the skulls the Belmont family has collected of vampires. (Season 2, Ep 3: Shadow)

First, as an animated piece, a painterly background still is utilized, a shot holds on these skulls for long seconds. The We and Alucard are gazing because the vampire skulls have significance. They portend. They linger. 

Second, the skulls are meaningful in their history. The macabre is heightened with the context. This establishes time and place for the viewer. We are meant to understand the breadth of the Belmont’s collection by the allusion to real museums and libraries.   
It evokes the cluttered displays of old museum collections:

 

 

[source](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/dickinsons-comprehensive-pictures-of-the-great-exhibition-of-1851)

 

 

For the viewer, we are open to a host of readings and history that are more sinister. We know yorik of hamlet, so we may feel alicard’s dark introspection to his own cursed nature. This is not a meaning alucard could apply himself: hamlet is written after approximately 1590. 

So to it evokes images of phrenology. The study of skills to determine superiority and extermination. The future meanings of the Belmont’s goal is more haunting to us, knowing the hunger of such quests. These meanings rely on the modern viewer’s understanding of seeing preserved skulls in a Victorian museum collection. For some, it may evoke the collection of bones in German concentration camps; for others, the measurement of collected African heads in British museums. More so, Alucard refers to them in this way:

“It’s like a museum dedicated to the extermination of my people. So, no, not thrilled.” 

The authors and staff of the show are intentionally alluding to modern viewer’s understandings of these objects, their material importance to understanding the show’s in-world politics and stakes as well as our own understanding of racial conflict and scientific racism. 

This of courses raises the questions of which meanings were intentionally imbued into the show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Idea in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel, Elaine Freedgood. 
> 
> Object Lessons and Ethnographic Displays: Museum Exhibitions and the Making of American Anthropology, David Jenkins, https://www.jstor.org/stable/179259?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
> 
> Cabinets and culture: Victorian anthropology and the museum context, David K. Van Keuren Ph.D., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1520-6696%28198901%2925%3A1%3C26%3A%3AAID-JHBS2300250103%3E3.0.CO%3B2-J


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